The Myth of Mental
نویسنده
چکیده
Thesis: So-called "essential indexicals" in thought are indeed essential, but they are not indexical. It is not their semantics that distinguishes them but their function, their psychological role. *********** A strong contemporary current runs to the effect that the ability of an agent to project knowledge of the world into relevant action in the world depends on the ability to think indexical thoughts. For example, if I wish to get to Boston, it may be helpful to know that the 8:25 train goes there. But I cannot put this knowledge to use unless I also come to know, at some point, that there [a place indexed via perception] is the 8:25 train. Similarly, should my life be endangered by an approaching bear, it might help me to know it. But it will not be enough for me to know of this danger to me under some impersonal description of me, such as "the person sitting in Bruno's favorite berry patch" or even under the name "Ruth Millikan," unless I further know that I am the person in Bruno's favorite berry patch or that I am Ruth Millikan (I might not know, for example, should I be amnesiac). But this kind of thought SS there is the 8:25; I am Ruth Millikan SS is, it is supposed, indexical. Thus Dennett, summing up the literature, remarks, "lndexicality of sentences appears to be the linguistic counterpart of that relativity to a subjective point of view that is a hallmark of mental states" (Dennett 1987, 132). He clarifies, using a (ubiquitous) quotation in which Perry remarks, "When you and I have beliefs under the common character of 'A bear is about to attack me' we behave similarly, ... [whereas] when you and I both apprehend that I am about to be attacked by a bear we behave differently" (Perry 1977, 494). That is, our behaviors hinge not so much on the objects of our thoughts, on their propositional contents, but on what Kaplan calls the "character," in this case the indexical type, of our thoughts. Kaplan too identifies "the context sensitivity of character" with what he calls "the context sensitivity of mental states" and remarks, "Dare I call it ego orientation?" (Kaplan 1989, 531).
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تاریخ انتشار 2000